398 ENGLISH FIELD SYSTEMS 



1 60 acres out of 220.' These ratios recall that which we have 

 seen maintained at Beddingfield in Suffolk a half-century later,- 

 and suggest that the tillage of the ToUeshunt demesne may not 

 have been the usual Essex practice. Such a belief is fostered by 

 the isolation of the instance. Of the forty Essex extents con- 

 tained in the inquisitions of the decade 7-16 Edward III, only at 

 ToUeshunt is the demesne described as lying at the same time one- 

 third fallow and in common. In view of these circumstances, it 

 is scarcely necessary to abandon the conclusion reached from a 

 study of Essex tines, charters, and surveys — the conclusion 

 that the field system of Essex was not that of the midlands, but 

 resembled either the East Anglian system or the Kentish. 



Having ascertained that the extents from the four counties of 

 the lower Thames basin during a decade of the fourteenth century 

 are almost entirely indifferent to the three-field system, we may 

 proceed to summarize the more positive results of this chapter. 

 The counties in question have been discussed together, not so much 

 because of their topographical unity as because their field systems 

 had certain characteristics which differentiated them from their 

 neighbors on all sides. Unhke Kent and East Anglia, they des- 

 ignated the unit of villein tenure a virgate; unlike the midlands, 

 they did not distribute the parcels of a virgate between two or 

 three large arable fields. 



Along with the characteristics which they had in common, how- 

 ever, went certain divergences that distinguished one county from 

 another. In Hertfordshire and Middlesex there was no exception 

 to the use of the term virgate, and the occurrence of that unit 

 was usual at a late date. With regard to Essex neither of these 

 generalizations is valid. Other units were there sometimes sub- 

 stituted for the virgate, notably the " terra " and an unnamed 

 area of uniform size, both already met with in East Anglia. The 



^ C. Inq. p. Mort., Edw. Ill, F. 66 {2,2,), Newport: " Sunt ibidem ccxx acre terre 

 arabilis . . . unde seminabantur ante mortem predicte Margarete clx acre de 

 semine yemali et quadragesimali." 



Ibid., F. 56 (i), " Lachlegh ": " Sunt ibidem ccxxii acre terre arabilis. . . . De 

 quibus seminabantur ante mortem predicti Egidii de seisona hyemali iiii'^v acre et 

 de seisona quadragesimali Ixxvi acre." 



2 Cf. above, p. 331. 



